Friendship and Love

From the onset of Book IX, Aristotle is saying that friendship and love are synonymous. When we discussed this in class, I found myself in disagreement. Love seems to be such a personal emotion, reserved only for special people that you have grown together with for an extended period of a time, a person that you can share deep, dark secrets with without fear of them judging you. Some inadvertent responsibility comes with the condition of being loved. When you tell someone that, you are now saddling them with the duties that you would never think to put onto someone you DON'T love.

Now, having said all that, I find it very hard to feel this way towards every person that I call a friend. Forget Facebook's definition of a friend, but even my own is different. I meet someone and within minutes we can become friends. Our relationship continues to blossom and grow as we get to know each other, but love is a long way down the road. Yet we have been friends for a long time. Perhaps Aristotle's definition of friendship was more personal than my own. It says, "any association of people who spend time and do things together, share in pains and pleasures, and wish for each other's good." I can see the discrepancy. There are many people with whom I share pleasures -- we have a common interest and we celebrate it together. But we are nowhere near close enough to share in the pains, that is more personal.

Even then I have a hard time saying that I love every person I am friends with. And by the same token, I don't want to deny the title of "friend" to all the people I care about but do not love. In this instance, I feel that the term love is being used out of place.